


Soco Amaretto Lime (Summer)

by Pinkerton



Series: Sowing Season [4]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, Coming Out, Family Issues, Homophobia, Hospitals, Humor, Jack Zimmermann's Overdose, M/M, Pre-Canon, Rehabilitation, The Author Regrets Everything, The Author Regrets Nothing, Vomiting, a lot of drama, divergence from fandom headcanon, obnoxious ringtones, resolving problems through sex instead of talking about them, teenage boys fighting with words poorly, teenage drinking, teenagers unable to control what's happening
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-19
Updated: 2018-09-12
Packaged: 2019-06-29 18:46:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15735258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pinkerton/pseuds/Pinkerton
Summary: The NHL Scouting Combine, a series of perfect days, the 2009 NHL Entry Draft, and what happens after.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> (You can breathe easy-ish till Ch 3, ok?)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The NHL Scouting Combine, tests both physical and mental, and a little bit of stress and anxiety for all parties invovled.

They roll into Toronto a few days into the Combine, exhausted and euphoric from their win, heading up to their room after an early dinner and a round of handshakes with NHL higher-ups. 

Their parents aren’t in till the next day, and Kent is seriously looking forward to vegging out with bad tv or seeing what the rest of the boys are up to. Naturally, Jack decides to spend the evening go over his notes for the interview sessions for the millionth time.

“I’m so bad at this.” He frowns at the numbered index cards in his hands. “I’m not even going to be able to have these tomorrow, ugh.”

Kent glances at the schedule on the table, then returns to his new iPhone. “You’re only talking to eight teams. You’ll be fine.”

It’s more than a little dramatic, he thinks, when Jack groans and flings himself back on their extra bed in despair. “And five more the day after tomorrow.”

“See, it’ll get better!” Kent reaches back and pets what he thinks is Jack’s thigh, or maybe his calf. He’s busy trying out ringtones. 

Jack smacks his hand away. “Just interview for me. You’re good at this shit.”

“Hey, primadonna, I’m pretty sure you could just sing ‘Oh, Canada’ during all the meetings and still get drafted at least in the second round.” Kent dodges the pillow Jack lobs at his head. “You’re going to be fine tomorrow. You were fine for all the interviews we did during playoffs.”

“Those were about the team, not a goddamn job interview.”

Kent taps on his phone’s photo app, pulling up an incredibly unflattering shot of Jack sleeping, and sees what editing tools he can use on it. “The coaches prepped us for this. Your dad prepped us for this. I’ve gone over those cards with you a billion times. Plus, the teams already got those form thingies.”

The questionnaires had been easy enough to fill out -- addresses and teams played for, awards, questions about strengths and weaknesses and play style. Kent’s pen had hesitated over the “ambitions outside of hockey” blank, his mind stalling out. Was it bad to say he wanted a degree? Would they doubt his dedication? Should he say something more obvious, like becoming a coach or a sports broadcaster? Something about being a good dad? Or about avoiding ending up in his 40’s, drunk and sad and bloated and bragging about glory days of his years in the Q in some dive bar in Buffalo?

He’d glanced over where Jack was filling out his own sheet. His answer read simply “N/A.”

He can hear rustling sounds coming from Jack’s general vicinity. “I know you’re not looking in my bag for the Nutella, of which you have already eaten way more than half of.” The rustling stops. “Told you to bring your own. Anyway, you know how I know you’re going to be fine tomorrow? You’re gonna be wearing Tom Ford.” 

“What?”

“He’s a designer and he made your suit --”

“No, I know that.” Jack’s voice is somewhere between sulky and pissed off. “Will he do the interviews for me?” 

The picture of Jack now has a weird blue filter over it and Kent can’t figure out how to make it go away. “Here’s the thing. you can’t be bad if you’re wearing a suit that good.” 

He knows the face Jack’s making without looking when he answers, “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Shh, I know you’re mad how I’m always right but —“

This time the pillow clocks him square in the head. 

The next day, Kent starts his talks with Colorado and ends with Long Island, a string of others in between. This last one is definitely taking longer than the others, but the GM is smiling a little more, which is probably good? Who knows. When it’s over and he shakes hands and is done for the day, he grabs a coffee and sneaks behind the divider where Jack’s talking to Vegas. He can just see through a crack in the fabric divider, but Jack’s voice comes through, smooth and flat, and in his second to last answer, he almost makes an actual joke.

Almost.

He sounds good, but from where he’s standing, Kent can see his right-hand fingers rubbing at the edge of his suit coat sleeve right where the Tom Ford label used to be.

* * * *

“I don’t see why you’re being so goddamn stubborn about this!”

They’ve been arguing on and off through the night; Kent’s about ready to pull his hair out. 

Jack sticks his head out from the bathroom doorway and talks around his toothbrush. “For the millionth time, you don’t have to.”

And isn’t that the goddamn crux of it. No one expects them to do all, or even part of, the physical tests a week after their Memorial Cup run. They already missed the fun group stuff the first few days of the Combine, and look, it’s not like Kent hasn’t been to the Hockey Hall of Fame or the CN Tower but whatever, he wouldn’t mind getting to know some of these guys outside of their stats. 

So if they already missed the fun stuff, he doesn’t see much reason to do the torturous stuff, especially when literally every suit there watched their last month of games. 

He hasn’t completely given up on applying logic to the situation. “We can skip. We just played all the hockey and if you say you’re not still hurting I’m going to call you a liar.”

“It’ll be fine,” Jack says, shifting his heavily bruised shoulder unconsciously as he walks to the bed and stretches out on it, stealing most of the pillows. “They need the stats.”

 _We’re already going first and second,_ Kent screams in his head. “Again, we just won --”

“I’m doing it,” Jack says, resolute.

“...fuck. That means --”

“You don’t have to.”

Of course he does. Because as much as he wants to deny it, the draft is going to be a contest between him and Jack, and as much as Jack is his best friend, and as much as he is really, actually, totally fine with going first or second, Kent is a competitive dick just like every other athlete in the world. He made peace with this long ago, but he’s not sure he could make peace with coming in second just because he skipped out on a handful of stupid tests.

He can tell himself it doesn’t matter, that his last name isn’t Zimmermann, that he was the alternate to Jack’s captain, but their stats are neck in neck and shit, since there’s no way for the best result, him and Jack getting on the same team, why not be the one to go first?

Kent looks up from his phone and at Jack, pale against the navy bedspread, eyes closed and doing the thing where he counts his breaths by touching his thumb to each fingertip, then back again, and all Kent can do is take a deep breath of his own, then hold it while he thinks.

Jack’s bigger than Kent, he’s faster, and he’s going first whether Kent does the tests with him or not. 

“Shit,” Kent exhales. “I’ll do some of the easy crap and the Wingate, but if I puke I’m bailing on the VOX2.”

Jack doesn’t say anything.

The silence stretches, and it’s making Kent twitch. “Wanna hear the ringtone I picked for you?”

Jack opens one eye, and Kent takes it as his cue to crank the volume. _“Shawty had them Apple Bottom Jeans, boots with the fur, the whole club was lookin' at her --”_

“Wait is that the song you’re always -- no,” Jack says, sitting up.

Kent cackles as it continues. _“She hit the floor, next thing you know, shawty got low low low low low low low low.”_

His laughter continues as Jack chases him out the door and down the hall. 

* * * *

They both puke after the Wingate, and they both do the VO2, and when the stat are tallied, Kent did a lot better than other guys his size, and Jack is at the top in 3 events. Kent finds him in the bathroom, splashing water on his face and neck after the final results are posted. 

They’ve showered and changed, but Jack still looks sweaty. Kent hands him a couple paper towels. “We got enough time for a nap before dinner.”

Jack ignores the towels and sinks the floor, face still dripping and his back against the fake cabinet doors under the sink. “Not tired.”

After he turns the water off, Kent joins him. “What’s up?”

“Missed first in pull-ups by one.” He lets his head fall back and stares at the fluorescent bulbs above them.

Kent missed first by a lot more than that. Articles about the day will include a lot of unsubtle commentary on how he performed well “for his height and weight”. 

He’s sore and tired in so many ways. 

He pokes Jack in the ribs. “You know you want to take advantage of that ultimate dream-zone whatever mattress in our room instead of sitting on this hardass floor.”

“I don’t deserve a nice mattress,” Jack says. 

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Kent stands up and twists in an effort to loosen up his back. It doesn’t work. “You topped out almost everything. How can you be so miserable about winning?”

Jack snorts. “You sound like my therapist.”

Kent freezes in place. “What?”

“Fuck,” Jack says as he squeezes his eyes shut even further. “Fuck.”

“Do you -- uh. Are you --”

“Forget I said that.” Jack’s voice is uneven, and Kent can see his chest rising and falling under his thin t-shirt.

Unsure of what to do, Kent shifts his weight from foot to foot. “You know you can talk to me --”

“Drop it,” Jack snaps, and then he’s up and out the door, Kent’s attempt to grab his arm fruitless. 

Before he can even fully process what happened, Zach Larsen comes in, yelling behind him. “Or don’t say hi, Zimmermann. It’s cool.” He startles when he sees Kent. “Jesus, Parson. What’s up with your boy?”

Kent shrugs. “What isn’t?”

“Fair. Intense dude. You coming to the party at my house?”

There's a good four hours before he has to meet his family for dinner. Why not blow off some steam first? “Yeah, man.” He looks in the mirror and flips his hat backward, so he can’t see the NHL logo on the front. “Gimme a lift?”

“Sure thing. Aww, you got an iPhone?” Larsy asks as Kent pulls it out of his pocket. “Text Zimmermann and invite him?”

No new messages are on the screen. 

Kent slings an arm around Larsy’s shoulder. He’s short too, so it’s easy. “I’m sure he’s heard about it. Let’s go.”

* * * * 

The Larsens’ house is on the edge of a lake in god knows where of what Larsy swears is still Toronto. 

There’s a huge deck covered in coolers of beer and people that Kent navigates through on his way downstairs to the yard, away from all the noise so he can figure out why the hell his phone is freaking out. 

When he gets a little bit down the long path to the dock he presses the home button and squints at the bright screen. Five missed calls from his parents and three from Kristen.

Oh. 

He settles himself on the edge of the dock and downs half of his fourth Coors Light. “The Silver Bullet, huh?” He smacks the can against his forehead. “End my misery?” 

Some beer sloshes onto his face. “Fine, I’ll call my fucking family,” he groans.

Kristen picks up before the first ring is even finished. “Where the hell are you, you asshole? Mom and dad are freaking out, they bought you that fucking phone so you’d call them -- was that a hiccup? Oh my god are you drunk?”

“No?” He wills everything in his body to not hiccup again, but one slips out. “A little?”

“I’m so pissed at you.”

“I’m all alone on a dock and drunk and Zimms is already mad at me, so could you be nice, please?” Kent pours some beer out into the water for the fish. He can hear clinking noises in the background of the call. “Did you guys go out for dinner without me?”

“I’m hanging up now --”

“No, please don’t, please Kristen, I need to tell you something.” 

“You have exactly 30 seconds.”

Kent takes a deep breath. “I can’t go first cause Jack’s going to except he hates me now cause I found out something I wasn’t supposed to, but it wasn’t my fault, and maybe I hate him, except Idon’t, not really, and you and mom and dad hate me too, and those bike tests were awful and I’m probably too drunk. Please don’t make me talk to mom and dad.”

“Oh, buddy.” The background noise gets softer. “I’m heading to the parking lot. I’ll extend your 30 seconds.”

“Thanks.” Kent wipes his face with his sleeve and tries to pick out a thought, but his head is swimming and there’s just _so much_. “I want to go first so bad, but so does Jack, and we can’t both do it and we’re going to be on different teams and I hate it.”

Kristen does that gross thing where she sucks air in through her teeth. “Yeah, so you can’t do anything about the draft, right?”

Kent sniffs. “Yeah. I mean, not now. I pedaled so hard, Kristen. So hard. But I can’t be taller than I am, it just doesn’t work, and it’s unfair and mean and stupid.”

“Oookay, I don’t know what that means, but you’re drunk and crying on a dock when you should be having a nice dinner with your family, or at least could be at a party.”

“I’m not crying,” Kent lies.

“And I’m not getting bitten by all the mosquitoes in Canada. I’ll figure out something to tell mom and dad. You should call Jack.”

“No. He hates me.”

“Oh my god, you’re so -- he doesn’t hate you.”

His beer is empty now, and that’s sad. He tells Kristen as much.

“I’m hanging up, now. I don’t hate you, I love you, please go drink some water.”

“Like the fishes?”

“No, like humans. Call me tomorrow, if you even remember to.”

“Bye.” He hangs up and looks out over the lake, then back at the party, still going full speed. It’s dark and quiet on the dock, which leaves his loud thoughts ricocheting around. That’s not good, so he makes his way back, slipping inside the first floor instead of heading up to the deck and finding a bathroom where he can wash his face and make sure he doesn’t look as messy as he feels, and cup his hands under the faucet and drink long gulps of water, to make Kristen happy.

It’s easy, then, to step back into the light, to smile at the people he passes on his way to get another beer, to laugh at the noogie he gets from a guy whose name he probably should know.

Eventually, he’s losing at pool and feeling pretty good about it. 

One of Larsy’s sisters-in-law, five months pregnant with her second child, is running kids back to the hotel in her giant mom-van, so Kent catches a ride and ends up in the front seat, slurring about how cool toddlers are and resisting the urge to rub her barely showing belly. 

They exchange phone numbers and a long hug when they’re all back to the hotel, and too soon Kent is staring at the room number on his and Jack’s room.

He takes a deep breath and opens the door, then stumbles around in the dark, stripping down to his boxers. Jack’s shit is still sprawled across the spare bed, so Kent gingerly slips in beside him, trying so hard not to jostle the mattress.

“Kenny?”

Shit. “Yeah, you got other boys coming in your room at 3 am?”

“Where were you?”

“Larsy’s party.”

“Thought so. He texted me.”

“Shoulda come. I missed you.”

“I’m right here.”

“You always say that.” Kent rolls over so he’s next to Jack. “Do you hate me?”

“I don’t -- why would you ask that?”

“I dunno.”

“We can talk about it tomorrow.” Jack pulls at the duvet so that it covers them both. “Good night.”

“Night,” Kent says. He’s not sleepy at all. He wonders if he could watch a tv show or something without Jack noticing.

That’s the last thought he has before he passes out.

They don’t end up talking in the morning. Instead, Kent wakes up with Jack pressed against his back, his morning wood against Kent’s ass. He moves his hips just a little, just enough for Jack’s dick to slide against him, then he does it again. 

Jack groans into the back of Kent’s neck, and they both move to shove their boxers down. They get a rhythm going, and they’ve never done this before, but it feels good, having the solid heat of Jack against him, Jack getting harder and breathing faster. Kent grabs Jack’s hand and slides it down his stomach, and he gets the message and wraps his hand around Kent’s cock, stroking in time to the movement of their hips. 

It’s slow, much slower than usual, but the morning is theirs, and so is the afternoon, and the next day, and the day after that, and it’s good, and Jack’s good and he and Kent are good.

Kent chases that good feeling, speeding up his hips, his breathing quick and shallow. Jack lets out a low moan that sends shivers down Kent’s spine, and that combined with the sudden hot wetness against his ass and back is what he needs to come, letting Jack’s hand keep going even as he’s coming down, even as it borders on too much. 

“Whoa,” Jack says as he stills his hand and they catch their breath.

“Yeah,” Kent answers. “You’re still coming down to Buffalo with me, right?”

Jack traces his fingers across Kent’s back. “Why wouldn’t I? You know you’ve got freckles here --” he runs a finger from one shoulder blade to the other, “-- and here.” He slides two fingers down the length of Kent’s spine, pausing at the top of his ass.

“And there?” Kent asks, breathy and soft.

“Nah, just jizz.” And then they’re both laughing, and Kent rolls over and kisses Jack, and Jack kisses back.

“I’m so glad this stupid thing is over,” Jack says when they break apart, and Kent’s not sure if he means the combine or their fight or both, but he’s not asking.

They eat breakfast at a diner with the Zimmermanns and the Parsons squeezed into a big round table. Jack slips his hand down to squeeze at Kent’s thigh, and Kent runs a foot up Jack’s leg. Maybe Kent’s parents haven’t fully forgiven him, and maybe he won’t go first in the draft, but he’s happy and full of pancakes and really doesn’t care.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Research notes! 1) Jo Druin and a couple other draft prospects sat out the physical part of the combine cause they had just won the Memorial Cup and were le tired. 2) Someone actually did put "N/A" in the "ambitious outside of hockey" part of their questionnaire. 3) While the physical tests are infamous, the interviews are more important.
> 
> To read a really good fic about pimms at the combine look no further than here. https://archiveofourown.org/works/5477903
> 
> Summerfrost and I share custody of Kent's ringtone for Jack. You're welcome. Thanks to her and selfsong for beta reading this and dealing with how much I love prepositions.
> 
> Whelp, onward!


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Luxurious summer days with just a pinch of foreboding.

“Haha, I’ve never slept in a bunk bed before.” Kent can hear Jack rustling under the covers below him, his movements shaking the creaky wooden frame. “Neat.”

“Good thing you’re bottom bunk then,” Kent says, kicking his covers down and rearranging his pillows. He’s definitely taller than the last time he slept in this bed, and it’s weirding him out. As he waits for Jack to settle in, Kent sniffs at his t-shirt and regrets not changing or showering after the cookout. All the burgers and grilled corn and berry crisp he’d eaten, as well as the several beers that his uncles had slipped to him, have left him too sleepy and heavy-limbed to really care that he smells like bonfire smoke. 

He and Jack had rolled into Buffalo late yesterday, and the family wasted no time in throwing him a truly epic cookout. Uncles, aunts, and cousins on both sides had shown up, as well as some of Kent’s local hockey boys. Brian had even shown up for a little while, with a hot pink streak in his hair and a cute boy holding his hand; he and his boyfriend, Brad, were heading to New York City in a couple days. Brad had been accepted to Pratt, and Brian was going to start community college and try to find a job. 

As he and Kent hugged goodbye, Brian had whispered in his ear, “Please tell me that you and tall, dark and handsome are together. He’s been watching you all night.”

It would have been so easy to say it, to drag Brian to the side and blurt out everything that had happened since last summer. He’d wanted to so badly, but what exactly could he say? He and Jack were always together, but not like that, except totally like that, kind of? It would take hours, so much longer than the space between a hug and letting go, or even a hushed conversation in a corner before someone, probably Jack, came looking for him. 

In the end, he had just squeezed Brian’s shoulder and wished him well, promising tickets to Rangers games when he’d be in the city. 

“Your family is really nice,” drifts up from below, interrupting his thoughts. “Are Parson parties always like that? So many people?”

“I mean, not always _that_ many, and my family in Virginia and North Carolina couldn’t come, but yeah. My parents have a lot of brothers and sisters, and some of our foster community always shows. Like, that really nice old lady who was flirting with you?”

“What?”

“Mrs. Hammond,” Kent answers. “American flag t-shirt? Sequined hat? She kept squeezing your arm.”

“..she said she needed help keeping balance on the grass.”

“Hah! She teaches Zumba classes at the YMCA three times a week. Steady as a rock. Sucker.” Jack doesn’t need to know that his mother had roped him into attending those classes more than once. “Anyway, her granddaughter lived with us for a few months when I was in 5th grade. Cool girl. Lives in California now.” 

No noise comes from below, so maybe Jack fell asleep during Kent’s story.

Rude.

Suddenly, there’s a loud thunk and some emphatic swearing. 

Kent rolls to the edge of the mattress and hangs over the edge. “Uh, buddy? Did you try to get up too fast and hit your head?”

“I don’t think I like bunk beds,” Jack says as he massages his forehead. “I’m coming up, scoot over.”

Kent pulls himself back up and grouses, “It’s a twin, I don’t see how --” and then Jack’s hoisted himself up and over and practically knocks the air out of Kent as he lands on him.

“God, you’re boney,” Jack says right before he steals the best pillow from under Kent’s head.

“Hey!” Kent says. “That’s my pillow.”

“Was,” Jack mumbles. 

They shuffle around and shove at each other for a while, the frame of the bed creaking the whole time.

”You and your giant ass are gonna break this bed,” Kent says. “This is like, at least a hundred more pounds than has ever been up here before.” There’s zero extra space no matter how they try to arrange themselves. 

He feels the breeze from the fan hit the bottom of his feet that were comfortably tucked under the covers a few seconds ago. “Zimms? Are your feet hanging off the edge?”

Jack, wrapped around Kent’s body like a koala on a bamboo branch, takes a minute to think about it. “...maybe.” He hitches his leg up, his thigh rubbing just south of Kent’s dick.

It’s super tempting to just scootch down an inch or so, or to relocate Jack’s hand from his stomach to lower, but Kent would pretty much rather die than have his Aunt Louise and Uncle Jeff hear him having sex through the thin wall separating him and Jack from the fold-out guest bed in the living room. 

Especially since they 100% know there’s no girl in Kent’s room. 

“Hey, so, half of my extended family is staying in this house. We can’t, uh. You know.”

“Hmm?” Jack asks, and the vibration of it runs across Kent’s shoulder and straight to his dick.

Shit. Maybe if they’re really quiet --

“Been having trouble sleeping.” Jack’s voice is half muffled.

Kent thought Jack had been more restless the past few nights. “Oh, yeah?” 

“Yeah. It’s just. Easier. When you, uh. You know.”

Taking the high road is not getting easier. 

“I mean, my aunt and uncle are most likely still awake on the other side of the wall, and the bed’s really creaky, and you know I’m not great at being quiet when --”

“God, no not -- I don’t. _Merde._ That’s not, uh. It’s just easier when you’re...here?”

“When I’m -- oh, oh, oh. You just want to cuddle, don’t you?”

“...no.” Jack’s hold on him tightens.

“Say it. Say you want to cuddle.”

“Shut up.” 

“Say, ‘I, Jack Zimmermann, top draft prospect and unrepentant Canadian in spite of my dual citizenship, desperately want to cuddle with -- ow! That’s going to leave a bruise, fucker.”

“Stop being annoying --”

“Unlikely.”

“-- and just. Talk to me?”

There’s a plea in Jack’s voice that reaches out and tugs on where Kent’s stored away how scared he is. In three weeks he’s going to sign away the next three years of his life to move to a city he doesn’t know and be the linchpin in a rebuild, and the less he thinks about it, the better.

He clears his throat. “Yeah, I can talk. So, you met my Aunt Lynnie, and she probably bored you to death with all those pictures of her daughter --”

“Elizabeth, goes to Harvard, plays lacrosse, probably will be a lawyer --”

“Yup. Here’s the thing. When she and my mom were kids they used to sneak out at night during high school -- “ Kent lays out the whole story of the time his mom and aunt got arrested for public indecency, and by the end of it Jack’s red-faced with laughter, and the conversation swings to dumb shit they got in trouble for when they were kids, and they just keep going. 

Kent’s light-headed from sleepiness and laughter when Jack puts one hand on his face and gently runs his thumb over his jaw. “Thanks.”

“Any time. Can we go to sleep now?”

“Yeah.” Jack sweeps Kent’s hair back from his face and presses a kiss to his forehead. “Yeah, Kenny. Let’s sleep.”

* * * *

They’d had to backtrack to the house after leaving the movie theater to get the key out of Kent’s old dresser, and Jack can grouse about that all he wants but it only takes a few seconds of jiggling for the old lock on the back doors of the skating rink to open, and Kent will take that as a win. Management probably hasn’t changed the rink’s locks since he was in elementary school. 

He pockets the key carefully as they go inside. It takes a minute, but their eyes adjust to the dark, and he leads Jack to the main gate and they both hop over it. Kent pauses by the security table, looking for and finding a half pack of Marlboros and a clipboard with pictures of grinning little girls taped to it. 

“Aw, yeah, Leonard is still here!” He pulls a king-sized Snickers bar out of his bag and sets it on the chair behind the table.

“Who?” Jack is already past Kent and heading toward the ice.

“Leonard,” Kent says, “the greatest security guard ever. I leave him candy bars so he knows it was me if anything is weird the next day. His granddaughters are like, so cute. He was teaching them how to skate last summer.”

“Cool.” Jack’s already swapped his terrible khaki cargo shorts for leggings and is lacing up his skates, so Kent sits next to him and does the same, a ritual so ingrained that it’s become meditative.

The ice is chippy as all hell after whatever practice ended the night, but it’s still nice to be skating in the dark, the soreness of the season finally gone. 

“Hey,” Jack says from the end zone. “Race you.”

“If you want to lose, be my guest -- hey!” Jack’s already taken off, but even his long legs are no match for Kent’s speed, and when he finally comes to a stop, yards behind Kent and with no real chance of catching up, Kent turns around to skate backward and taunt him. 

“Guess we know who won’t be doing the All-Star speed challenge,” he sing-songs, and as hoped that’s all it takes for Jack to put on a burst of speed and charges at Kent, slowing down enough just before contact that their fall to the ice is soft.

“Oof,” Kent says. “Saw that rush coming a mile away. Gotta improve your deke, buddy, I thought you’d been watching me this season. Could have learned something, you know --” and Kent knows that Jack is only kissing him to shut him up, but that doesn’t make it less awesome. 

It gets real good real fast. Jack’s started doing this thing where he bites Kent’s lower lip and it always makes him shudder and his dick twitch. He wants to keep going so bad, but Jack’s rolled him onto his back and the wet chill of the ice has seeped through his t-shirt completely. 

“Hey, stop.”

Jack pulls away. “You okay?”

He’s shivering a little. “No, I’m so fucking cold.”

“Oh.” Jack pushes himself up and looks around. “So, I assume there’s locker rooms somewhere?”

“Yes, why do you -- oh my god, I’m not blowing you surrounded by jockstrap funk. Gross.”

“Hmm.” A beat of silence passes as Jack thinks, but then that grin that Kent loves and fears spreads over his face. “Do you have keys to the Zamboni garage?” 

“I hate you so much.” 

“Concession stand? Stale popcorn and hotdog water do it for you?”

“Eww.”

“Skate sharpening area seems too dangerous.”

“Starting to get weird, man.” They go back and forth for a while, Jack suggesting more and more ridiculous locations while Kent gets colder and colder and eventually the mood is totally gone. They haul each other up and skate to warm up and end up slingshotting each other down the ice till they’re both laughing too hard to stay upright. 

* * * * 

Kent’s pretty sure he and Jack should work on sobering up enough to get past his mom when they get home. They’re supposed to be up at 6 am tomorrow to drive to Montreal, and they need to pack, and take showers, and he’s lost track of time but it has to be super late --

\-- but they’re sprawled out in the grass at the park a few blocks from the house, the heat of the day still leaving the ground under their backs, the cool air of the night against their faces. They’d come to the park at twilight to chase fireflies, then hidden away inside the castle at the top of the slide when it had gotten dark enough for security to start kicking people out, passing a water bottle full of raspberry vodka back and forth. By the time security came to lock the main gate, they were already pretty drunk.

It had taken them a while to get out of the castle, partly because it was never meant to hold two hockey players, partly because they kept stopping to make out, but eventually the kissing had turned into dares and shit talking escalating in slide races which, Kent will swear until his dying day, Jack cheated at.

Now they’re looking up through the edges of a willow tree at the dark summer sky. 

“I think that one’s Orion,” Kent says. He taps at Jack’s shoulder, and Jack passes the bottle to him. “ ‘s got a belt.”

“Hmm, don’t think so. Can’t see Orion in the summer.” Jack reaches over and pushes a finger against Kent’s temple, nudging his head the tiniest bit to the right. “Ok, look at the top of that tree, and go up to that bright star. That’s the big dipper, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Look up from the cup and there’s the Little Dipper, kind of upside down. See the really bright star?”

Kent squints for a few seconds. “Got it.”

“Are you lying?”

“Yup.” All the stars look bright, and he vaguely remembers going to a planetarium in maybe 3rd grade, but all he remembers is the astronaut ice cream. 

Jack moves closer. “Here, put your head right next to mine so we get the same view.”

He does, and Jack takes his hand and laces their fingers together, keeping his index finger out. He traces the big dipper, then slowly moves up. “That’s Polaris,” he says. 

“It’s so bright, how did I miss it?”

“Dunno.” Jack lowers their hands to rest between their bodies but doesn’t let go. “I got really into astronomy when I was a kid. Had a big telescope and everything.”

Kent squeezes his hand. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. My mom helped me make charts and stuff. But I got really busy with hockey, so I kind of forgot about it.”

“That’s cool, though,” Kent says. He tries to picture little Jack, standing on a chair on the Zimmermann's back deck, focused and still with concentration. “So you wanted to be an astronaut?”

“No, I wanted to be a hockey player. You?”

It’s been years since he’s thought about a career outside of hockey. “Uh, guess I wanted to be a nurse like my mom. She helps so many people, you know? But my uncle told me I should be a doctor, not a nurse, and it doesn’t matter cause I know I couldn’t stick people with needles and stuff.” He lets go of Jack’s hand to sit up and find the water bottle, knocks back half of what’s left, then nudges Jack’s shoulder. “Finish this.”

“Hey,” Kent says as Jack is mid-chug. “I can see Uranus from here.”

Kent’s pretty sure it’s the first time Jack has done an actual spit-take in his life, and he’d congratulate him if he weren’t covered in vodka. Instead, he tackles him.

It takes longer than it did when they first met two years ago for Jack to pin Kent, pressing his wrists into the grass above his shoulders and using his thighs to clamp down on his hips. Kent squirms and complains until Jack lowers his head down and kisses him, and then doesn’t stop except for the slightest pause as he shifts his weight and starts to let go of Kent’s wrists.

Kent pulls himself away from Jack’s lips. “Wait a sec. Maybe, um --” He’s breathing hard. “Maybe you can, you know. Keep your hands there?”

“Oh?” Jack tightens his grip and Kent groans. “Oh. Oh shit. Do you want me to -- uh,”

“Yeah,” Kent says, not sure of the exact question he’s answering, but sure that he wants more of whatever is happening now. “I don’t know, but -- ah!” 

Jack kisses over where he’s just bitten hard at Kent’s neck. “Huh. I knew you liked hickeys, but -- “

“Less talking, more -- fuck— that!” 

By the time they make it home, all the lights are out and there’s a note left on the kitchen table that Kent’s sure he’ll get in trouble for not reading tomorrow, but he only has enough energy and sobriety to make it to his room and fold himself and Jack into the bottom bunk.

He ends up with his back against the wall and Jack in front of him, acting like the world’s most aggressive little spoon. His neck and shoulders sting and there’s probably still grass stuck in his hair; it feels great. 

Jack starts snoring almost instantly, and Kent follows right after, but not before a glance up at the bunk above, where he’d spent so many nights miserable that he’d never be able to play hockey _and_ kiss boys, and how could he ever choose?

He buries his face in Jack’s hair and sleeps. 

* * * * 

“Oh, we’re almost here,” Jack says, waking up Kent.

They’ve been driving north-ish from Montreal for maybe two hours, the landscape of endless trees making Kent feel like he was on yet another Rimouski roadie, except on those they didn’t get to blast Top 40. 

Despite Jack’s protests, “Party in the USA” is a road trip classic and Kent will hear no argument against it. 

They turn off onto a bumpy dirt road with wooden fencing running alongside it. There are a couple of dappled horses chilling under some trees. “This is scenic as shit,” Kent says, lifting up his phone to take a picture.

Jack comes to a stop at a gate and leans out to punch a code into the lockbox. “What happened to your camera? Did you forget it?” 

“Nah, Kristen needed it for an art class or something. The phone’s easier to carry around, anyway. Like, zero reception up here, though.” He snaps a few more shots of the fields then turns to the creaky gate as it swings open, focusing on the wood-burned sign hanging off to the side that reads _Chateaux Lemieux._

“Holy fuck,” Kent says as they pull through. “Does this house belong to Mario Lemieux?”

“Oh, you saw the sign. He made that himself. I think that one was his fifth try? He always says it so it rhymes, like Cha-too Lemieux. Thinks it’s hilarious.”

“Sure,” Kent says. He’s feeling a little dizzy.

“He’s not here though,” Jack continues, oblivious to Kent’s pain. “Probably back Friday with my parents, bet they’ll want to grill out that night. I think Aunt Nat will be with him but my dad was a little fuzzy on the details. Uh, what are you doing?”

“Just putting my head between my legs and breathing for a bit.” It’s nice, looking at the floorboards.

Jack pokes at his side. “Why are you being weird?”

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe because when you said ‘hey, let’s go to my uncle’s summer cabin instead of just bumming around Montreal,’ you neglected to mention that your uncle is Mario _fucking_ Lemieux.”

“Oh, hey, my dorky Uncle Mario is _that_ Mario, better?” 

“No.” The ride is bumpy enough that Kent has to sit up anyway. They finally reach the entry to the cabin, which is bigger than Kent’s parents’ house and two of their neighbor’s places put together. 

Jack parks half on the grass and grabs his backpack. “I don’t see what the big deal is. How is this different from Uncle Wayne? You met him at World Juniors, remember? At breakfast?.”

Kent groans. “Yeah, I totally forgot about meeting literally the greatest hockey player who has ever lived.”

“Don’t let my dad hear you say that. Anyway, you were fine when that happened.” Jack leaves the window down, jumps out, and shuts the door. He sticks his head back in. “You coming or what?”

Kent hasn’t moved from the passenger seat. “When I met Gretzky -- “

“Uncle Wayne.”

“Shut up, when I met him my mouth was full of croissant and he said ‘hi’ and then he left and it was not me staying at and then having a meal _at his house_.”

“The local bakery sells croissants. I can get you some if that would help. It’s like a 30-minute drive, though.”

Kent tries to lunge over the console to punch Jack’s shoulder, but only succeeds in clotheslining himself with the seatbelt. Jack laughs and laughs as Kent finally unbuckles and gets out, glaring at him over the hood. “You’re the worst.”

“Well, you’re the one who decided to be my best friend,” Jack calls over his shoulder as they start toward the front door.

“I didn’t know any better at the time. You tricked me with bagels and French lessons. I was young and impressionable.”

The keys are hidden under a fake rock, which Kent guesses is fine because what else is possibly out here to break into a house, except, like, moose or something, and he’s pretty sure moose don’t have opposable thumbs. 

He stops dead in his tracks. “Hey, Zimms? Do moose have opposable thumbs?” 

Jack’s focused on trying to match keys to locks.“Huh?”

“Moose. Meeses. Do they -- you know what, if they do I don’t want to know. Are there any up here?”

“Oh, yeah. They’re pretty intimidating.” The door finally opens, and they shoulder their bags and walk in, Kent trailing behind. "That's why we have the bells."

“The what?”

“The anti-moose bells. You didn’t bring one?”

“I don’t -- I’ve lived in Canada for two years, and I never --”

“Uncle Mario can probably loan you one. If you aren’t wearing it and you see a moose, don’t panic. Just start singing ‘Oh, Canada’ --”

The joke finally clicks, and Kent groans. “You’re such a jerk.”

Jack turns a corner and vanishes from sight but not from hearing range. “Yeah, and you love me.”

Kent freezes. He can’t hear the squeak of Jack’s new sneakers anymore, so he must have stopped, too. 

“Uh, it. You love it.” He can hear Jack clear his throat. “You coming?”

Kent’s probably reading way too much into this. “Yeah, but keep talking. This place is so freaking huge if I get lost you’re gonna have to send a sherpa after me.”

“Or a moose.” 

“I can’t believe I’m friends with you,” Kent says as he catches up with Jack at the door to a huge bedroom. “Whoa.”

There’s a brick fireplace with overstuffed chairs on either side that Kent is 100% sure he’s going to live in for the next few days, and a rolled up screen over the mantle. He looks up and sure enough, a projector is wired up into the ceiling. The bed is a huge four-poster thing covered in piles of blankets and surrounded by fur rugs, and he’s positive the door to his right will open into an en-suite bathroom.

“Wait, how is this _our_ room?”

Jack’s already dumped his bags on the floor and used his foot to slide them into the closet. “Something about redecorating and paint fumes in the other ones, but whatever cause this one is the best and my parents always get it first. Watch.” He picks up a remote from the nightstand and pushes a button. The blinds whirr and close, the lights brighten, and some kind of weird jazz starts playing. 

The rest of the house is equally ridiculous. There’s a kitchen full of shiny appliances Kent doesn’t know how to use, more bathrooms than he can count, a media room, and skylights everywhere. 

They end up having a beer in the basement rec room, complete with a bar that has its own dishwasher. Kent wipes the foam from the top of his lip with his sleeve. “So, after we finish these, what do you want to do?”

“Hmm.” Jack thinks for a second. “Do you know how to ride a horse?”

“What? No. Wait, why?”

The grin that slowly spreads over Jack’s face is terrifying. 

Thank god Mario Lemieux has a hot tub because after an afternoon of Jack cackling at him as he tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to make a horse named Buttercup go in the direction he wanted to go, Kent’s thighs are killing him. 

That doesn’t stop him from wrapping his legs around Jack when he slides through the water to him, the buoyancy of the steaming jets of water beating against them doing the rest of the work of lifting him up to Jack’s body. Kent tips his head back as Jack kisses down his neck; the sky is a smear of pinks and oranges as the sun sets. 

Jack reaches a hand between them and palms Kent through his trunks, feeling down the length of his cock and making Kent groan when he cups and strokes his balls, and it’s good and Kent needs to get naked, like, now. He hoists himself out of the water and sits on the edge of the tub, lifting his hips as Jack pulls his trunks off, but when he tries to get back into the water, Jack puts his hands on his thighs, keeping him there, then digs in with his fingertips and drags them down to Kent’s knees, easing his legs apart so he can move between them. 

The sky shifts into shades of purple, but Kent doesn’t notice. His vision narrows down to Jack’s head between his thighs, lips and tongue busy bringing him off, so much better than he was even a month ago, getting closer and closer to the base of Kent’s dick, knowing just when to pull back and tease. Orgasm hits him hard, and in spite of Kent managing to hit Jack’s shoulder right before, Jack doesn’t pull off and finish him with his hand like usual, he just takes him as far as he can, and Kent would worry that he’ll choke himself if he could string together a single thought at all.

It takes a while for him to come down, for his breathing to slow, for him to be able to open his eyes and look at Jack, still below him, rubbing his hands up and down his thighs. His face is flushed from the heat of the tub, and there’s come on his chin.

“Hey,” Jack says. “You’re shaking a little. Cold?”

Some kind of noise escapes Kent as he pushes off the edge of the tub and back into the water, wrapping himself around Jack, pressing their bodies together and his face into the warmth of his neck, the faint trace of his cologne still present. “Just…this. Okay?”

“Okay,” Jack says, stroking his back. “Whatever you want, Kenny.”

Eventually, they end up in their room, swaddled in soft white bathrobes with the fireplace burning and all the windows open. They drank one bottle of red wine with dinner and are well into a second. 

“I’m sure they have these on DVD,” Jack slurs the fifth time _Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire_ is interrupted by a Canadian Tire ad.

“It took us twenty minutes to figure out how to turn all this shit on, but if you wanna try to figure out the DVD player,” Kent gestures expansively with his glass, narrowly avoiding spilling on the upholstery of his chair, “go ‘head.”

Jack thinks about it while the Weasley twins grow long white beards on the screen. “Yeah,” Jack says. “This is good.”

They don’t make it to the end of the movie, but they do remember to turn off the gas to the fire and manage to make it from the chairs to the bed, weaving as they walk the short distance. There’re too many pillows, but the blankets are soft and smell so good. 

“Goodnight,” Jack yawns. “Don’t let the mooses bite.”

“Your teeth are purple, and I hate you.”

“No, you don’t,” Jack says muzzily. “You -- “ He cuts himself off with a yawn, long and slow, and doesn’t say anything else.

There are no clocks in the room, so Kent has no idea what time it is when he wakes up, Jack sound asleep behind him. The shower has one of those rain shower head things and side jets, and he figures it out fast enough that he only gets hit with freezing cold water once. He showers, shaves off the little bit of fuzz his chin is willing to grow, wraps a towel around his waist, then pauses. 

He doesn’t need any sort of official countdown to know how many days are left before the draft; his bones know, the soft fleshy bits covering them know, his brain knows, and worst of all his heart knows. 

He lets himself feel the weight of all these parts and the days and hours pressing down on him, then reaches into his toiletries kit and grabs the pill bottle. He shakes one out and frowns. He could have sworn the bottle was practically full when he got back from the combine, and now there’s maybe a half dozen left. 

It doesn’t make sense -- he doesn’t take them every day, just when he feels really on edge so there should be way more. Maybe he grabbed an older bottle when he was packing? The part of the label that shows the date has been smudged by something oily, so that’s no help.

Maybe he needs some coffee to help his skills of deduction wake up.

He’s given up on figuring out what happened by the time Jack wanders into the kitchen half an hour later. Kent slides him the coffee pot. “Hey, I guess fucked up my counting a little. Gonna run out of pills before my mom comes up and can bring more.”

“Huh.” Jack adds cream and sugar to his cup and stirs it with Kent’s spoon. “My parents could bring up more when they come this weekend.”

“Nah, this is from my doc in Buffalo. Don’t think a Canadian pharmacy will fill it.”

Jack sets down two bowls and the milk pitcher. “I’ll get my parents to call my doctor and bring some up for you this weekend.”

“Oh yeah,” Kent says. “That’ll work. Good. So, what kind of cereal does a hockey legend keep around?”

Five minutes later, Kent gives up and dumps his half-eaten bowl of Grape Nuts down the sink. He’ll just steal Jack’s energy bars while they’re kayaking. 

It’s the best vacation Kent’s had in ages, full of long days out in the fresh air and on the water that leave them sun-drunk and giddy even before they head down to the wine cellar before dinner and pretend to know anything about which bottles to choose. They go to bed loose-limbed and handsy and wake up whenever they want to. 

It’s perfect.

There are some heroic cleaning efforts in the morning of the day the adults arrive, and the house looks pretty good by the time Mario and Nathalie arrive. The Lemieux’s are welcoming and warm, and within half an hour Kent is standing on the porch with a glass of Nathalie’s secret recipe sangria, Mario’s arm slung across his shoulder as he points out the new landscaping on the south side of the property. The Zimmermanns arrive a few hours later, Alicia behind the wheel of a red Porsche, taking the turns too fast, her hair under a silk scarf and her nose every so slightly sunburned.

She looks _amazing_.

Jack kicks him behind the knee; he lurches forward to get hugs and help carry in coolers of food.

Dinner is delicious and festive, even if Jack and Kent are cut off after a beer each. Mario Lemieux not only knows Kent’s stats and compliments his French, he also gives Bad Bob a run for his money when it comes to dad jokes. As he and Alicia fight over the last sliver of cake, Bob goes inside and comes back out with a box of fireworks.

That night, Kent sleeps under the same roof as two living hockey legends, Jack’s arm heavy across his chest, a couple weeks away from going first or second in the NHL draft and moving to Las Vegas or Long Island. 

His family is hoping for Long Island, obviously, though if they end up having to fly to Vegas on the regular it’s not like Kent won’t be able to afford to buy them tickets. He thinks of his mom in first class, of his dad probably still renting the cheapest economy car possible on principle, and of Kristen pretending not to be impressed by the lights on the strip the first time she sees them.

Not that Kent has ever seen them, either. 

But they’re probably really awesome.

Bright lights on casinos or whatever the hell kind of lights they have in Nassau County, it doesn’t really matter. Nothing could be more out of his control at this point.

Jack shifts beside him and Kent turns his head to look at him. The light’s too low to see, but he knows there’s a flush across his nose and cheeks from being out on the lake all day. It’ll fade way before draft day, way before he pulls on a jersey while camera flashes blind him. 

Kent will either be in the audience or backstage. 

He focuses on matching his breathing to Jack’s, of relaxing his body, from his toes to his neck. It helps, as does tugging on Jack till he rolls so his shoulder is pressed into Kent’s, warm and solid and grounding, something to cling to for a little longer.

They drive back to Montreal the next afternoon; Bob and Alicia are staying at the cabin for a few days, but Jack and Kent have a publicity photo shoot they need to get to, and Kent’s itching for an ass-kicking workout and some ice time. 

On the way back, Jack learns the chorus to both Party in the USA and Bad Romance. Kent adds that win to the summer’s tally. 

His list of wins is getting really long, and it’s only halfway through June, and this is probably the best summer he’s ever had. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FYI, Kent totally did blow Jack in the locker room in Buffalo.
> 
> Thanks to my team, selfsong and summerfrost.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The 2009 NHL Entry Draft.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tags have been updated.

“You look beautiful,” Kent tells his mom as he hugs her. 

She really does, in a dress that he’s never seen before, and soft makeup that brings out her eyes.“Think I’ll end up on tv?” she asks as she reaches out to smooth his hair. 

He dodges, then leans in and kisses her cheek. “I hope not. Remember, today is about me.”

He can’t dodge the flick to his ear. “Brat,” she says affectionately. 

He offers her his arm and leads them to their seats, his dad and Kristen trailing behind. They’re on the opposite side from the Zimmermanns’ seats, still empty. 

Kent rolls his eyes. Jack had been so strange yesterday. He’d managed to escape their handlers and the hotel by claiming a stomach ache and spending the night at home. 

The hotel room had been too empty, so Kent made Kristen come down and sleep in the other bed. 

He still hadn’t slept at all. 

His calls and texts have gone unanswered, and it pissed him off enough that it was a relief to hand his phone over before the ceremony. Sure, the day is scheduled and crazy and stressful, but Jack could have stayed and been a dick about it in person. 

It’s not like Kent isn’t used to it. 

Instead, he’s in his mansion and not being bossed around and shoved in front of cameras every other minute and practically vibrating with nervous energy. Kent had run on a treadmill for miles that morning, took a half hour shower with fancy body wash he’d stolen from Kristen, jerked off, listened to ocean sounds, and talked to Robbie, and none of it had helped. 

He can’t imagine that Jack was any better off at home than at the hotel, but whatever. He’s never pulled this much of a diva routine before, so Kent takes deep breaths and tries to relax.

This day is about them, but it’ll be Kent on that stage alone when he's called, all eyes on him. 

His mom squeezes his arm and he focuses on that. 

The buzz in the auditorium is growing by the minute, and almost all the seats are filled with the glaring exception of the Zimmermanns’. Kent can see the officials and team managers off the side of the stage, ready to come out when called. 

Where the fuck is Jack? 

And then, it’s starting, and some suit walks to the microphone and taps it. “Before we commence, we have an update. Jack Zimmermann has withdrawn his name from the list of draftees.”

He says thank you before he walks off. The crowd is going from stunned silence to a cacophony of chatter. Someone’s hand is on his shoulder. He can taste bile in the back of his throat and his tie is strangling him and the lights are too bright and then he’s not sure how he ended up in a bathroom, but he’s there, and a blurry face is telling him something that sounds like he has to go back so he can be first, he has to go start things, and then he’s back in his seat and then he’s on stage and he can feel his lips smile and smell the newness of the Las Vegas Aces jersey he pulls over his head. 

There’s so many flashes and voices and handshakes, and then he’s sitting backstage and watching a tiny tv as more and more names are called. 

None of the names are Jack’s. 

Because Jack’s not here. 

Other people are here. 

There’s a security guard by the emergency exit. 

There’s a handler by the door. 

There’s the hallway to the stage, where boys are waiting after their names were called, beaming and ready for the reporters. 

There’s two blocks and a desk between him and his phone. 

Someone claps him on the back and his eyes focus. “Alright son, we’re all wrapped up.” It’s the GM for the Aces. “Your family will meet us at the steakhouse.”

“I need my phone.” The guard’s shifted a little to the left. Kent can see the sign that says “PUSH” now. 

“Oh, it’s fine,” the suit says. Your parents know the address.”

* * * *

“Oh my goodness, there you are!” Kristen grabs Kent’s arm as he steps out of the car. “I’m so sorry,” she says, flashing an apologetic smile, “but if Kent doesn’t call Grandma Roberta he might get cut out of the will.”

Grandma Roberta died when Kent was five. 

“It’ll just be a minute, we’ll find you, c’mon Kent.” She pulls him past the coat check and the bathrooms and pushes on a door marked “Employees Only,” sighing in relief when it swings open and pulling him in after her. The smell of detergent and bleach envelops them, and Kent collapses onto a pile of plastic-wrapped tablecloths. 

Kristen presses his phone into his hand. 

There are dozens of missed calls and texts, but none from Jack. 

Jack doesn’t answer his cell. Neither do Bob or Alicia. 

Someone picks up the house phone before the first ring finishes. “Raquel?” Alicia asks. “Are you close? Please tell me you’re close.”

“It’s Kent.” His voice wobbles. “What’s wrong with Jack?” 

She lets out a sound of irritation. “We’re getting to the bottom of that and he’s not --,” It sounds like she’s holding the phone away from her face, but her voice still comes through. “Jack Laurent, if you think you’re getting up from that table -- I don’t care what your father says!” She comes back to the conversation. “Kent, I can’t talk to you right now,” and hangs up. 

He lowers the phone slowly and stares at Kristen. “What do I do?”

She’s never looked more unsure. “I’m going to get Mom? I don’t — I don’t know what to do, I’m so sorry.”

She leaves, and Kent stares at his phone. It takes seven minutes for his mom to arrive.

“Baby?” She kneels down and strokes his hair. “I’m so sorry, it’s such a big place Kristen couldn’t find me. Everything is going to be okay, you hear me?”

“You’re lying.” He shoves her hand away.

“I know it was a big surprise for everyone to hear about Jack —“

“He was _fine_ , I would have — “ Shit. If he starts crying he won’t be able to stop. He takes the deepest breath he can. “Alicia hung up on me, I gotta go —“

“Go where?”

“His house, I gotta go help him.” He starts to stand, but his mom engulfs him in a hug, and he’s too wrecked to struggle. 

“This is the hard part.” Her perfume smells like home. 

“What is?” Kent whispers. 

“Realizing that you have to keep going when everything feels awful. It’s what being an adult is.”

He swallows hard. “I’m only seventeen.”

His mom pulls back and looks at him. “Yes, and I’m sorry Jack withdrew, and I’m sorry you don’t have answers, but right now we have a dinner to go to.” She stands and pulls him up. “Let his parents take care of him, and us take care of you.”

“Mom, I don’t think he’s okay, and I need to go —“

“Kent,” she says a little sharply as she straightens his tie and smooths the shoulders of his jacket, “dinner.”

Everyone is at the bar, and he gets a round of applause and a lot of pats on the back as he walks to stand by Kristen. Alex Dumont, the head coach of the Aces, makes a beeline to him. He has a firm handshake. “Helluva draft day. Never seen anything quite like it.”

“Still processing,” Kent says in the understatement of the century. “Zimms — uh, Jack —“

“Damndest thing. No one can get through to Bobby. You two are close, right?”

Yesterday morning, Kent had woken up when Jack rolled over and snuggled into his chest before opening his eyes and smiling at Kent. 

Kent clears his throat. “Yes sir.”

“That’s a lot. You doing okay, son?” Dumont stoops just a little so he and Kent are face to face. His eyes are kind, and Kent offhandedly remembers that he has grandkids Kent’s age. “This circus is a lot to take in. You gonna be okay?”

He could be talking about tonight, he could be talking about the rest of the week of contracts and meetings and interviews, or he could be talking about the rest of Kent’s NHL career. 

It doesn’t matter. 

Kent went number one and he’s here. 

Jack didn’t, and he’s not. 

“Yeah, Coach. Put me in.”

“Attaboy! Let’s get you some champagne, and I’ll introduce you to our other prospects.”

Kent smiles through dinner, laughs at all the right places, tells stories about the Q, and charms his way through the excruciating two hours.

Back at the hotel, he cries himself to sleep with his head in his mother’s lap and his phone in his hand. 

****

_Apple bottom jeans, boots with the fur —_

Kent’s up like a shot, grabbing his phone and running to the bathroom. 

_— the whole club was lookin at her_

“Zimms?”

“Kenny?” Jack’s voice is slow and slurred. 

“Are you drunk? Where are you? I’ll come right now —“

“I miss you. Why are you gone?” 

Kent scrubs his hand across his face. “Where are you?”

“Inna bathroom. Floor’s cold. They’re all gone. Don’t feel good.”

“What’s all gone?”

“I can’t find any more and — whoa. I don’t — I don’t feel —“

“Jack?” No answer. “Jack?”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry just tell me where you are.”

“You’re not — where are you?”

“Jack, you gotta go get your mom. Get up and get your mom.”

“Gotta. I gotta go.”

“No no no no, get up —“

“Kenny?”

There’s a metallic clink, and then the beep of an ended call.

Kent fumbles through his recent calls and the phones ringing and that’s Bob’s voice, sleepy and confused. “Allô?

“Go find Jack.”

“Who is this?”

“Now, go find him now!” Kent yells as he paces the tiny space. 

“Kent? It’s really late, I’ll get Jack to call you —“

This isn’t working and it has to. Kent pulls at his hair as he tries again. “Listen to me! He just did, and he didn’t make any sense, _and_ _you have to go find him_.”

Bob suddenly sounds wide awake. “Do you know where — “

“Bathroom.”

He can hear Bob waking up Alicia, and they must leave the phone behind because the scream he hears is muffled and far away, and then there’s so much yelling and when he makes out the word “ambulance” he hangs up. 

Belatedly, he realizes his mom’s been knocking on the bathroom door and calling his name. He opens the door and walks past her, ignoring whatever she’s saying shoving his feet into his shoes and a hat on his head. He makes sure he has his wallet and has one hand on the doorknob when his mother grabs him by the shoulders. 

When he turns to face her, he feels nothing. 

“Kent Victor Parson, what is happening?”

What a dumb question. “Jack’s going to the hospital, and so am I.”

She drops her head for a minute, inhales deeply, and looks back up at him. 

It’s still startling to be taller than her. 

“I know you two have been good friends to each other,” she says, clearly picking her words carefully, “but you are being very dramatic about all this, and you have been all night. If he is going to the hospital, you can visit in a day or two. The last thing that family needs —“

“I’m in love with him.”

It’s like watching a scene in a movie, really. Kent can see his mother’s confusion, can feel her hands drop from his shoulder, see her disbelief, but it’s all filtered and far away from him. 

“I don’t —“ she breaks off, unsure. “I know this has been a really stressful day, and I’m not sure you know what you’re saying now, honey.”

Calmly, he leans forward and kisses her cheek. “I have to go now.” 

He walks through the door and down the hall without looking back. 

****

The cab driver is happy enough to go around to the local hospitals after Kent slips him a hundred dollars, and at the third one, he finds what he’s looking for — Claude, the Zimmermann’s driver, standing outside the ER entryway and smoking a cigarette. 

He has the cabbie drop him off behind an idling ambulance, trying to decide if he should bank on his stealth abilities to get in or if he should work the “just drafted to the NHL” card when Alicia walks out and steals Claude’s cigarette, taking a long drag. 

She doesn’t look surprised when he walks up to them. “You want one?” she asks. 

“I didn’t know you smoke.” It’s the most asinine thing he could say, but he’s so thrown by it.

“Rarely. Bad habit from my modeling days. Jack’s been asking for you.”

“He’s — really? Is he—“

“He’s an idiot and I could kill him except that would get in the way of me never ever letting go of him again.” She blows out a plume of smoke and passes the cigarette back to Claude. “You can come with me and see him, but first I need coffee and possibly a sedative for Bob. C’mon.” 

The basement cafe smells like burned coffee and bleach. Kent can’t focus on anything except how close to empty Alicia’s cup is and startles when she speaks. 

“How was the draft?” she asks. 

“What?” Kent’s not sure he heard her right.

“The draft. Big room, lots of people, I’m guessing you went first to Vegas?” She turns to look at the pastry case. “Want a donut?”

Kent stares at her. “You really want to talk about the draft now?”

“Is that a no to the donut?” She sips her coffee. “I’m in shock. Three people have told me that, so it must be true, and I’m going to ride it for as long as I can before I have to deal with the fact that Bob and I severely fucked up and our son almost died.”

Kent’s body goes numb. 

“Oh, shit, your face.” Alicia reaches over the table and grabs his hand. “Sorry. He’s okay. He’s going to be okay.”

“What happened?” His voice comes out so small.

Alicia sighs and shifts in her chair. “Did you know that I was in labor with Jack for 14 hours?”

“Uh, no?”

“Never underestimate how painful being a mother is. Anyway, long story short, he took too many of those damn pills.” She drains her coffee. “I thought I’d found all of them. We don’t even know where he got that many.”

“Fuck. _Fuck,_ ” Kent says. “They were mine. That’s where they went. He took mine and lied about it.”

“Yeah, Jack and the truth have had a rocky few months it seems.” The fluorescent lights are unforgiving on the bags under her eyes. Kent realizes he’s never seen her without makeup before. 

She stands and stretches. “Packed up the whole damn wine cellar for nothing.”

“Uh—“

“Part of the longer story. Thanks for not making me sit here alone. Let’s go see our boy. Fair warning, he’s a little out of it.”

The maze of stairs and hallways blurs into one long streak of beige. Kent’s not sure he could find his way out if he wanted to. 

She leads him to Jack’s bed in the ICU. There’s a window looking out over the parking lot, and Bob’s managed to fall asleep sitting up in one of the nearby chairs. There’s a tv turned to static, and signs over the sink, but Kent doesn’t take in anything except Jack laid out on the bed, his heart monitor beeping steadily, IV bags hanging overhead. 

Jack stirs and opens his eyes when Kent takes his free hand. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Kent says. 

“You’re here.” Jack smiles. “Missed you. I wanna sleep.” He scoots over, and Kent doesn’t even think about it before he’s climbing over the low sidebar and curling into Jack, lifting his face for a long, slow kiss. 

“Well that explains a lot,” Alicia says somewhere in the background, but Kent ignores it because Jack is nuzzling his face with his nose and making low humming sounds. 

“Night, Kenny,” Jack whispers. “Love you.”

Later, Kent will hope that no one but Jack heard the broken sound that comes from deep in his chest and lays heavy over them. 

“Love you, too,” Kent says, low and close to Jack’s ear. 

Jack’s arms relax around him as he slips into sleep. Kent feels the weight of a blanket being placed over then both, and in spite of the lights and the noise of the machines, and the bustle of the nurses’ station just outside, they sleep. 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to summerfrost for the beta, and to them and Sekrit for listening to me talk endlessly about how I wanted to structure this (and the next) chapter. Also props to Zombizombi for the medical info. 
> 
> I really hope I did this justice. Things will become clearer in the next chapter, which I hope to have done by next Monday.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The aftermath of the draft, in which Kent Parson's various families -- biological, hockey, found, and otherwise -- work through a very dramatic few days, some more successfully than others.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tags updated.
> 
> Thank you to summerfrost, whose beta notes give me life. 
> 
> This chapter was not looked at by my superstar medical beta cause I needed things to happen for narrative reasons. Medical professionals, I apologize.

Jack is shaking his shoulder, and there’s no way it’s time to get up because Kent is still so tired. “Get back in bed, asshole. ‘S early.”

“Kent,” a woman’s voice says. 

Everything clicks into place at vicious speed. 

“Sorry,” he says to Alicia as he sits up. Sometime around sunrise, when the ICU nurses had kicked them out, they’d headed to get a few hours of real sleep while Bob stayed with Jack. 

They both slept on the giant couches in the Zimmerman’s living room, unwilling to climb the stairs to the second floor and walk past the bathroom. 

“I’m going to make coffee and a lot of unpleasant phone calls.” She tucks a wayward curl behind her ear as she speaks. “Bob says they’re moving Jack to a private room as soon as a bed opens, so I’ll go back after that.” 

“I’ll come with you,” Kent says.

“No.” The surety of it stings.

His mouth runs ahead of him. “But you said Jack was asking for me last night.”

Alicia moves to sit beside him and reaches out to smooth his hair. “You’ve got a lot of people waiting for you today, and Bob and Jack and I — well, we have work to do.”

“Please,” Kent can feel the panic rising, “please let me come?”

She tilts her head as she looks at him for so long that Kent feels raw when she finally speaks. “How about I send Claude to the hotel in the afternoon to pick you up to sit with Jack for dinner?.”

“But I — “ he looks at her face and reconsiders. “ — uh, yeah, dinner sounds great.” 

He falls asleep in the car. Just before they get to the hotel, Alicia wakes him up, then takes his chin in her hand, turning his face from side to side. She rummages in her giant purse and pulls out a stick of concealer, dabbing it under his eyes and tapping it in with her fingers. 

“Thanks,” Kent whispers. “Thanks for being so nice to me when you’re, uh, you know.”

“Oh kiddo,” Alicia says sadly. “You look how I feel.”

He grimaces. “I mostly feel like dry heaving.”

“It shows. Concealer only does so much.” She pauses and pulls a wipe out of her purse then delicately dabs the makeup off her fingers. “They’re going to ask you about him.”

“Yeah.” Kent barely stops himself from rubbing his face. He plays with the strings of his hoodie instead. ”Haven’t really thought about that yet.”

“Divert, divert, divert.” All the softness she’d been directing at him sharpens, and suddenly there’s steel in her eyes and a hard set to her face, and Kent can see the movie star she was and imagine her looking down her nose at overbearing reporters. “The press can smell blood in the water. Be charming, be funny, and bring it back to you.”

It’s too much. “I just want to be with Jack.”

“Tough cookies. You’re on your way to being a millionaire and savior of a franchise that’s desperate for wins. They’re not going to give you a break, so make sure you don’t need one. You’re in the big leagues and everyone is hungry.”

There’s nothing to say to that, so he takes her offered hug, steps out of the car, and squares his shoulders. 

He’s Kent Fucking Parson, number one NHL draft pick, and ten pounds of whoop-ass in a five-pound bag. 

* * * * 

He can feel a bead of sweat drip down his back as he poses, and poses, and poses. One of the photographers waves him over when they’re finally done and scrolls through what looks like hundreds of photos of him — in a jersey, in a suit, with a stick and puck, without, and dozens and dozens of shots with his arm around the shoulders of middle aged managers and coaches and owners in front of a backdrop of Ace’s logos in the hotel’s massive conference room.

The room is buzzing with energy as other teams run their prospects through variations of the same. Across the room, the Islanders fawn over their number two pick, a pale blond kid from Minnesota. 

Kent hates him. He’s never met him, but he hates him.

Someone else comes up and speaks to the photographer in rapid French. “ _This kid and Zimmermann are inseparable. Think he knows what happened?”_

 _“Looks like they’re separated now. Maybe this one poisoned him or something --”_ Kent flinches _, “ -- slipped it in his drink. You know he wouldn’t have gone first if —“_

 _“But I did,”_ Kent shoots back.He makes a point of leaning forward and reading their name tags. “ _Hey, Jacques Leclerc and Henri Martel, I like to take pictures, too. Want to see one of me and Jack and Mario Lemieux at his summer cabin? Or maybe one of Bad Bob losing at mini golf? Maybe I should give them your names, huh?”_

The men stare at him, mouths agape. He flips his snap back around and smirks. “One last shot, fellas? Nah? Cool, cool. I look forward to not seeing you at any Aces media event, like, ever.”

He feels the facade slip as he leaves the room to cool down, his fists clenching reflexively. He wishes he could do this stuff in his gear, the armor of the added height and bulk wrapped around him. 

The further he gets from the conference rooms full of rookies and press and hockey suits, the better. His schedule is clear until tomorrow, so he buys a victory Snickers in the building’s lobby newsstand. He hands his coins to the cashier over the stacks of newspapers with Jack’s name across the front page.

When he gets in the car a little later, he asks Claude to turn off the radio, just in case. 

* * * * 

Kent’s spacing out, the generic framed print on the wall swimming in and out of focus, and it takes him a second to register the rustling noises in the background as Jack finally wakes up. 

“Is that my Jello?” Jack asks, one eye open and squinting at Kent. 

“Yup, sleeping beauty, sure is.” Kent eats another spoonful, squishing it back and forth between his front teeth. 

Jack shudders. “That sounds horrible. Stop it.”

“Nope.” Kent thinks he was about nine the last time he had a Jello cup. The taste hasn’t changed a bit.

“You’re the worst.” He pulls his pillow over his head. 

Kent takes the container of cherry flavor he snuck off an unattended meal cart and sets it on the bedside table. “Here.” 

Jack peeks out. “I don’t like Jello.”

Kent sets down his snack, slumps down in the uncomfortable chair, and wills himself not to scream out of pure exhaustion and frustration. “What the fuck, Jack?” 

“It’s a texture thing,” Jack says. “Too slimy.”

“It’s too -- you know that’s not what I mean!”

Jack rolls to face the window, and Kent is momentarily distracted by the sliver of skin the loosely tied hospital gown shows, a glimpse of a body he thought he knew so well. 

“I talked to the psych people like 5 times today,” Jack says, and Kent wishes he could see his face, but is too afraid he’ll stop talking if he asks him to roll over. “They kept asking me if it was on purpose.”

Kent’s stomach drops. “Was it?” 

“I don’t think it was. I don’t remember.” He turns back to Kent, eyes bloodshot and skin sallow. “Were you here last night? Dad said you were.”

“Uh, yeah. You --- you don’t remember that, either?”

“Apparently if you chase a dozen Ativan with a lot of scotch it impairs your memory.”

“ — what?“

“It was my dad’s Lagavulin. Think he’ll be mad at me?”

“Shut up _,_ ” Kent hisses, any remaining composure fleeing. “You could have _died_. Stop making jokes -- “

“I could have died,” Jack snaps, throwing the words back at Kent, “so I get to make as many jokes as I want.” He stands suddenly, the movement making his IV stand wobble before he grabs it with one hand and Kent’s collar with the other, and drags them both into the bathroom. He pulls the door shut and shoves Kent against it, kissing him hard enough that their teeth clack together. 

“You taste like Jello,” Jack says when he comes up for air.

Kent just leans back in and takes everything Jack’s giving. “You fucking asshole,” he murmurs while Jack bites at his ear. “I was so scared —“

“I stopped breathing,” Jack says, the warmth of his breath against Kent’s ear. “I fucking stopped breathing, what am I supposed to do with that?”

“I don’t know,” Kent says, barely managing to choke back the hysteria bubbling up at the back of his throat. “You dropped out of the goddamn draft and I went first, what am _I_ supposed to do with that?” He’s got a hand slipped through the back of Jack’s gown, skin hot and solid against his hand. 

“Oh,” Jack says, “so sorry. Did I step on your moment?”

The true absurdity and horror of the past 24 hours hit Kent and he starts laughing and can’t stop till tears are running down his face, and it only takes a beat for Jack to join him, leaning against the counter as Kent holds on to a towel rack. 

“Oh my god,” Jack wheezes. “I fucked up. I fucked up so bad.”

“You went number one at fucking up!” It’s not funny, and Kent would love to stop laughing, but he just can’t, even when he straightens up and tries to take deep breaths. 

“You know what else is fucked up?” he manages to gasp, “I’m moving to Las Vegas. Like, the desert, and I’m gonna play for the shittiest team, oh my god, they’re so bad. They’re so, so bad, and I’m so scared, and I have no idea what the fuck I’m doing!”

“Me either, clearly.” Jack’s starting to wind down, a little unsteady on his feet now. “How did we get here?”

“Claude drove me and then you shoved me in here, that’s how,” Kent says as he reels Jack in for another kiss. “How are you even standing right now?”

Jack shrugs. “Apparently I’ll feel awful tomorrow. C’mon, some nurse is gonna come looking.”

Once Jack gets situated in bed, he falls asleep almost instantly, and Kent’s fingers itch to brush back his hair from his forehead, to trace the arch of his nose and the cut of his cheeks, to wrap around his wrist like cuffs and never let go.

Instead, he flips his phone over and over in his hand, sends a text, and waits for Bob and Alicia to come back.

* * * * 

Green Spot is jumping as always, but as usual, the booth in the back is open, a picture of Bob and an assortment of Jack’s “uncles” watching over it from the wall. Normally, the table would be swarming with guys whose jerseys are either in or destined for the Hockey Hall of Fame, but today it's occupied solely by his mother.

“Hi, mom,” Kent says. “No problems getting here?”

“Nope, and let me tell you, name dropping for a table when it’s your son? Unreal.” She gets a kiss on the cheek before he slides into the booth across from her. She’s tired, puffy around the eyes, but the stark love and fondness on her face when she looks at him pull at Kent’s heart. 

Their waitress swings by, and he orders the hot dog special and a massive poutine for them to share, and another coffee.

“Your French sounds so good,” his mom says as the waitress walks away. 

“It is,” Kent says. The last time he was here he and Jack had tried to shove carbs into their idiot goalie to get him sober enough to not get them all kicked out of a cab at 2 am. 

He pours way too much sugar in his coffee and takes a sip. “Dad and Kristen get home okay?”

She nods. “Hour ago. They missed you at lunch, but they understand how busy you were with the press.”

Kent snorts. “The press. Sure.”

“Watch your tone, mister. Being the number one pick doesn’t mean you get to slide on your manners.” She’s clicking her spoon against her mug harder than usual. “How were the photoshoots?”

“Just ask what you want to.” Kent is so goddamn tired.

She looks up from her coffee. “How’s Jack?”

“Well, you know. He almost died, so, not great.” He slides the salt shaker in front of him and bats it between his hands, its glide over the smooth formica table top soothing. “He probably OD’d on pills he stole from me, and I still don’t know why he dropped out of the draft. And I guess I’m moving to Las Vegas?” 

His mom nods at the change in topic, so he keeps going. “I’ve never been past the midwest. What if I hate it? What if I’m not good enough? ” 

_What if I’m not as good as they think Jack would have been?_ It’s a thought that has been kicking around in his mind all day and decided to take this moment to bloom into fullness, which is just awesome and great timing, obviously.

She reaches out for his hand but he pulls it away, and an awkward second or two passes. “Honey,” she says beseechingly, “I think a change of scenery will be the best possible thing for you. You can get your head on straight and put all this Jack nonsense behind you.”

The waitress comes by with their food at that minute, a woman who’s waited on Kent at least twice every time he’s been in Montreal, and she glances from him to his mother while she sets down hot sauce and napkins. “Honey,” she says, looking only at him, “you need a thing you holler, ok?”

“Thanks Marie,” Kent grits out.

She hesitates, then walks away. 

He’s not sure he’ll ever be hungry again, but he already feels achy and awful and running on a cup of Jello and some coffee for the rest of the day is not going to help. The forkful of poutine he shoves in his mouth is way too hot, but it buys him time as his mother cuts into a hot dog and chooses her words.

“It’s just -- maybe your father and I made a mistake, letting you go off so far away, so young.” She sighs. “You know I like Jan and Tim very much, but they have their own daughter, and you were always on the road and in hotels, and some of those boys are downright hooligans and you know it, and maybe it just wasn’t,” she falters for a moment. “Maybe it wasn’t, um. Healthy. For a growing boy. With --” she grimaces, “urges.”

Kent chokes on a cheese curd, and by the time he’s done coughing and drinking water, he still hasn’t thought of a single response.

“You know,” she says, handing him a napkin, “you could have come to your father and me about this issue with Jack.”

He swaps plates with her, putting the traitorous cheese curds out of reach. “I didn’t know he was taking so many pills. If I had I would have told someone.”

Marie swings by to refill their coffees, and his mom pastes a smile on for her. It looks like it hurts. “That’s not what I meant,” she says once she’s gone. “Obviously you’ve gotten all confused about things with him, and to be honest, getting back home for a while and then meeting some nice young women in Vegas will probably --”

“I’m not going to Buffalo,” Kent says abruptly.

His mother sets down her mug carefully. “This is -- this is news to me.”

“I’m staying with Jack.” 

“You are not.” His mother pushes her plate away. “You are coming back to Buffalo with me, and you and I will figure this all out and you will go to Las Vegas and be _normal_.”

The pain isn’t sharp like a cut or diffuse like a bruise. It’s more like when a check knocks the air out of him, the kind of pain of knowing that you’ll breathe again, but unsure of when.

He wipes his mouth and hands with a napkin and puts a couple twenties on the table. “I love you and dad so much, but I’m not coming to Buffalo this summer. You can explain it to dad however you want.”

“We love you, too, which is why we need you home. It’s not too late, you haven’t carried on enough that people have noticed. Let us help you fix this.”

He thinks of Marc’s soft curls, and of Brian and his bravado, but mostly it’s Jack, his smile and his face and the way he fails to hide his big heart under his grumpiness, the feel of him under Kent’s hands, the beauty of his hockey, the indelible marks they’ve left on each other.

He can hear his mother calling his name as he walks out the door.

* * * *

A full ten hours of sleep later, Kent’s ready to take on the world, or at least Montreal and the lingering bits of the NHL circus lingering in it.

But first, breakfast.

Half an hour later, he nabs the sports section of the paper someone left behind at the bakery and shakes it open, enjoying the last bites of his third pastry as he reads. The journos had gone with one of the pictures of him taking a shot at nothing, and the copy manages to call him a diva twice. 

He’s all smiles as the counter person helps him fill a box up with treats to take to the hospital, and his good mood continues as he decides to walk the distance. The city is putting on the start of its summer splendor, his breakfast was carby and amazing, and Jack’s probably going to be discharged soon. He’s not sure if Alicia will let him stay at the house, but he can definitely afford a hotel for a while. 

The flow of patients and staff and guests makes a little more sense than it did yesterday, and soon enough Kent has his visitor’s pass and is headed up to the 8th floor. He recognizes a nurse at the front desk and stops, ready to pass out baked goods to one and all. 

“Thanks,” she says, grabbing an almond croissant, “you just missed them.”

“Weird, I didn’t walk past them on the way up.” It’s not like Bob and Alicia don’t command attention, but he was pretty distracted. 

“Oh,” she says, patting at the powdered sugar now dusted across her scrub top. “Guess no one called you.” She points to the muted tv in the corner of the station, set to a sports news show. Kent knows the guys talking personally.

The captions are too small to read, but the banner running across the bottom of the screen isn’t.

“ZIMMERMANN TO REHAB; PARSON TO LAS VEGAS.”

* * * *

His head is aching despite his best attempts at napping, and the insistent ring of his room’s phone isn’t helping. He almost knocks it off the nightstand before he answers with a bleary, “What?”

It’s Jack.

“My parents have gone fucking insane --”

His head clears instantly. “Where are you? I went to your house and no one was there --”

“ -- they’re flying me across the country to some bullshit rehab center --”

“ _What?”_ Kent almost drops the phone. “Where? Why? You’re not --”

“I don’t know! They won’t believe me that there aren't more pills in the house --”

“Jack, what --”

“I don’t -- nothing, maman! Kenny, I can’t -- .”

The line goes dead.

* * * *

Everything coming out of the sports reporters mouths is a barely modified version of what they’ve been saying for the past hour, only now Kent is watching it from the hotel bar instead of his room, feet swinging under his chair as he nurses a soda that he desperately wishes had liquor in it.

The notes he’s scribbled on cocktail napkins are starting to blur together when he hears his name being called from across the room.

He twists in his chair to look behind him, but it really isn’t necessary. He’d know that awful accent anywhere. “Remmy?”

Remmy half jogs the rest of the distance to the bar and pulls up the chair next to him. He claps him on the back, hard. “Hi Parse. Strange days, huh? I heard that Jack dropped.”

“And you drove to Montreal?” Kent glances down at the pale blue Oceanic shirt Remmy’s wearing. The logo sits dead center of his chest, over his heart. 

He orders orange juice then turns back to Kent. “You know, I’ve never been. Knew where you were staying and took a chance you’d still be here. If not, I’d have a fun day walking around, right?”

Kent doesn’t manage to completely knock Remmy off the barstool when he hugs him, but it’s a near miss. “Thank you,” he says.

Remmy pulls back and holds Kent by the shoulders. “You look like hell.”

“Yeah,” Kent acknowledges. “Can you get me out of here?”

“Where to?”

“Um…”

Two and a half days later, Kent knocks on the door of James’ house.

Robbie opens the door. “Kent?” he asks, eyes wide, and then Kent’s got his arms full of a very enthusiastic ten-year old. 

“Yeah, buddy,” he says, untangling himself carefully and bending down so they’re the same height. “That bottom bunk still open?”

In lieu of an answer, Robbie takes off into the house screeching, “Kent’s here! He’s sleeping in _my_ room!” while a curly haired toddler peeks out at him from just inside the door. She’s scooped up by a beautiful woman Kent recognizes from pictures Robbie sent him. 

“Well, well,” Christine says, balancing Alana on her hip. “I finally get to meet the famous Kent Parson.” She sets Alana down and gives Kent a big hug, then introduces herself to Remmy. He also gets a hug before she leads them inside to the kitchen and starts pouring glasses of iced tea. Remmy rambles about how he and Kent got to be friends, and Christine’s eyebrows about vanish into her hairline he Remmy recounts how far he’s driven in the past four days. 

“Eh,” he says in a garble of French and English, “nothing to do up north in the summer. Thought I’d swing by Montreal and it just so happened Parse was up for a road trip. I hear you have good smoked meat here?”

”Best barbeque in America,” Christine says with a smile.

Kent translates as needed and makes a mental note to buy Remmy a new car with his signing bonus.

She leaves the pitcher on the table and sets out a plate of cookies. “Y’all staying for a while or is this just a drop in?” 

The tea is sweet enough to make Kent’s teeth hurt. 

“Uh -- “ Kent hadn’t practiced this part during the hours he and Remmy had spent tearing apart team rosters for the upcoming season and fighting over music. “I mean --”

Christine reaches out and squeezes his hand. “Robbie’s been out of school for almost a month and is about to drive me crazy. Please stay awhile and keep him busy.”

That night, tucked into the bottom of Robbie’s bunk bed with Remmy sleeping on the trundle, Kent stares into the dark and pretends to sleep. 

He and Remmy and Robbie play baseball and swim at the public pool, bike to the library and catch bugs in the backyard. They help James out with his plumbing business and do yoga with Christine every morning, Remmy more successfully than Kent. They go to farmers markets and parks and movies, and Kent learns of the glory of Waffle House, grits, and what happens when you try to teach southerners French. 

James and Christine never ask once why Kent is here, and he loves them fiercely for it.

In the middle of it all, Kent turns 18. Christine and Alana go to the grocery store in the morning and return two hours later with barbeque fixings and Kristen. Everyone politely ignores them for the five minutes they spend holding each other and crying in the middle of the living room. Later, they both watch Robbie help James cover a cake in strawberries and blueberries to make a slightly crooked American flag. 

Remmy eventually comes back from the gym and running errands for Christine, arms loaded with bags of paper table cloths and what Kent has a sneaking suspicion are patriotic party hats. 

He sees Kristen sitting at the counter, drops everything he’s holding, and turns beet red.

Kent turns to Kristen, ready to laugh, but to his horror, she’s blushing, too. 

“No,” Kent whispers while James laughs his ass off.

They all spend the heat of the early afternoon running through sprinklers in the backyard, Kristen and Remmy sneaking looks at each other when they think Kent isn’t watching.

“I’m always watching,” Kent says under his breath to no one.

He ceedes birthday boy privileges to stay outside and clean up the yard. He’s just about got the hose put away when Robbie comes running out of the house, holding up Kent’s phone. “It’s playing music!” he yells.

Across the lawn Kent can just make out the song.

_Next thing you know_

_Shawty got low low low low low low low low --_

He grabs the phone from Robbie just in time. “Jack?” His heart is racing.

“Happy birthday, Kenny.” His voice is clear but there’s a sadness to it Kent’s not used to hearing.

There’s so much Kent wants to say, but he starts with the truest. “I miss you so much.”

“I know, I miss -- okay, okay, I know -- I gotta talk fast, this orderly is doing me a big favor.”

“Where are you?”

Jack chuckles. “You know how we thought a lot of the juniors teams were in the ass-middle of nowhere? I’m like, eight degrees past that.”

Kent tries to laugh, but it comes out strangled. “Moose bells?”

“Totally. I’m fine. Kind of. I mean, I think I will be. I’m getting together a field hockey league with the other patients.”

And there’s the Zimms Kent knows and loves. “You’ve only been there six days!”

“I’m a self-starter. Hey, so -- “ he pauses. “It’s uh, good to hear your voice.”

“You, too. Just -- just call me when you can?”

“It’s not --,” Jack sighs. “I’m not supposed to talk to people connected to my drug use.”

“The fuck? I’m not -- Zimms, I’m not.”

“I know,” Jack says, “but since I stole your pills, it kind of -- like, every time I think I’ve covered all the ways I fucked up? New ones.”

“But how do I --”

“Fuck, I gotta go. Happy birthday.”

The call drops.

Kent can feel Robbie poking at his arm. He closes his eyes and breathes like Christine taught him. “Mountain pose,” Robbie says, and Kent shifts minutely.

“Nose thing,” he adds, and Kent pushes his left nostril closed to breathe through the right, then swaps to exhale, then repeat in reverse. 

“Thanks, Robster,” he says a minute later. “I needed that.”

“Well, I need a piggyback ride.”

“Oh, really,” Kent says, moving to kneel.

When they eventually come inside, Kent plays with Alana and helps her build with her big, soft blocks. He doesn’t feel better, but he doesn’t feel worse.

A week later, Remmy heads back to Quebec, and Kent flies to Las Vegas and grins for the cameras as he signs his contract.

This grin, unlike all previous draft related photos, isn’t faked -- $900,000 a year plus a couple million in bonuses isn’t too shabby for a day’s work.

He has a week full of meetings and tours and ice time, and he’s itching to put on his skates again. 

His hotel room opens onto a huge balcony, and the mild night air is a respite from the heat of the day. The view stretches beyond the edges of the city and to the mountains in the distance. 

Kent looks up into the sky and finds the Big Dipper, then follows where it points to Polaris. 

It shines on, 600-year-old light pointing north, bright and true. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, some of you might be like, "Pinkerton, you said this story would have a happy ending for Kent, WHAT THE HECK???"
> 
> Y'all, it will! I just need like 20-30K to get it there. 
> 
> *dodges rotten fruit*
> 
> But also, this summer focused on narrowing Kent's world down to him and Jack as they moved toward the hugeness of the draft. Future installations will, hopefully, have a more expansive feel. 
> 
> Plus a lot of drama. Of course. 
> 
> And, as ever, Jack Zimmermann.
> 
> Thank you so, so, so, so much for reading this. I wrote a book about Kent Parson, and you read it, and I cannot express how much that means to me. I hope I did well enough that you'll stick around for the further adventures of everyone's problematic fave.


End file.
